Dear
classmates,This time, I'd like
to introduce you a personal friend of mine - a farmer, named Present Participle.
Never heard of him? Well, this isn't surprising because in our wealthy
society farmers try to travel unrecognised, sometimes even disguised as
businessmen and women under the name of " - Ing-Form". There is even a
King, named "Gerund". He tries to imitate him by taking on his outfit (the
tail of - ing). But the difference between these two is, that Farmer
Present Participle can define somebody or something whereas King Gerund
describes things or persons that are used for an activity. Why farmers
shouldn't be kings? The reason is, that they have different friends. The
farmer loves other farmer families and the king loves the high society.Both, Farmer Present
Participle and King Gerund have their special circles of friendsFarmer Present Participle
loves some working class families of the Verb Clan and King Gerund tends
to meet the noble people of Nouns;

i.e. Farmer Present
Participle is closer to the Verbs Clan and King Gerund is closer to the
Nouns Clan in attitude, behaviour and company.

Example:Gerunds:Things/ Persons used for an activitydancing-teacher (Tanzlehrer)=
a teacher that is needed for dancing

Present Participle:things/persons that are doing something

dancing-bear (tanzender
Bär) a bear which dances

There are 4 different participle forms:
Present participle past participleactive voice
making*
having made**passive voice
being made ***
having been made***

* This form
goes steady with progressive forms of the verb** This
form is connected with compound forms of the verb in the following tenses: the present
perfect (has/have made), the past perfect
(had made), the conditional
II (would have made) and the future
II (will have made)*** This form
goes together with all passive forms of the verbs

Let's have a
look at a lively Verb. The complete form of the verb consists of

Farmer Present Participle's
function is only to shorten sentences.That means, you can
shorten a normal sentence by using the Participle Constructions.This is what remains
from the defining characteristics of the verb:

1. tenses
: there are only two left: present participle and past participle,
but the latter won't be my subject today2. active voice
or passive voice.

Everything else has
dropped!!

Deciding what function
Present Participles have in a sentence can sometimes be confusing. But
let's have a closer look at those different functions.

In order not to be
discovered by normal people, Farmer Present Participle can function as
an adjective or an adverbial.

Example:

The captain of the sinking
ship remained standing on
deck.(Attribute) (Complement)

Farmer Present Participle
has good relations to some families. One family, named "Verbs of Motion&Rest",
has got six members. Their names are:"to
sit, stand, lie, remain, come and go".

Farmer Present Participle
lets them go first, when he invites them.

Example:Farmer Present
Participle sits there waiting for his family.

The farmer doesn't
only "sit and wait", he also observes people. He sees people, he hears,
feels, notices, finds and watches people like everybody else.

Would you like
to hear what people say about him?

"Oh,
he watches us kissing!" (Er sieht zu uns, wie wir uns küssen!) "Yes, he heard
me talking on the telephone!!" "He didn't
see me leaving the house to go to my boyfriend and he
didn't observe me flirting with him!"

Do
you hear those people speaking about the farmer? Why
didn't I say:Do
you hear those people speak about the farmer?

The answer is
like this:

The present participle
is used to describe an activity in progress, especially when all parts
of the activity are watched. If you report on the facts only, then
you will use the infinitive in both verbs like:

"We saw the man open
the car door, put in the box and drive off."
That is the infinitive. (.sahen, dass....)"We saw the man
opening the car door, putting in the box and driving off." That is the
participle. (sahen, wie....)

Oh sorry, the
farmer wants to go on. Let's listen to him:

"I'm
a lucky man feeling like you."

Silence. Nothing more
to hear.You see, that Farmer
Present Participle doesn't love to say things in a long way because he
is very lazy (or tired). But it's normal. I'm lazy, too. So keep in mind,
that this is very typical of him.

In fact, we can
say:

"I'm
a lucky man who is feeling like you."

In this sentence,
the relative pronoun "who" is the subject.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What we should learn
next is, that we are all individuals, and so is Farmer Present Participle.He sometimes walks
ahead (precedes) another sentence and we must wait for the subject
to come.

(In this case the clause with the present participle
is separated from the main clause by a comma.)

Listen to Farmer Present
Participle telling us something about his last trip to Australia with his
friend:

"Looking down from
the plane, we saw the lights of the city.(Als wir... hinunterschauten...,
...)

Putting "not" or "never"
in front of the participle, his second statement will be negative in form:

"Not knowing much about
the climate in Australia, we were surprised by the very hot weather." (Da wir nicht
viel ... wussten, ...)

And now, his
words continue sounding very formal:

"Having
travelled so far the first weeks, we were glad to have a rest for a few
days." (Da wir... so
weit gereist waren, ...)

Farmer Present
Participle's friend Subordinate Clause told me the same story but in his
own way.

"When
we looked down from the plane, we saw the lights of the city below." "As we didn't
know much about the climate in Australia, we were surprised by the hot
weather." Friend Subordinate
Clause didn't like to give his last statement in a formal way. So he simply
said: "As we had travelled
so far, we were glad to have a rest for a few days.

You see, both
have said the same thing, but in their own way and - that's important!!
- in contrast to the Subordinate Clause the farmer uses no conjunction
and only parts of the verbs.The main clause remains the same all the time.
It can take different tenses for example the past, but Farmer Present
Participle always remains the same, although it is also translated
with the past form in German.But if Farmer Present
Participle's action took place before the action of the main clause, then
his Dad Farmer Past Participle Active takes over:

Example:Having waited for a
long time, I decided to go home."Having + -ed or third form of irregular verbs"
(past participle) is used.

Now, we have
had 1. the negative
form, 2. the formal(participle)
and the informal (subordinate clause) form, 3. we had a
look at actions that happened before another action (having + past participle).

There is one question
to be answered: What about Farmer Present Participle and his relation to
conjunctions? Can the Farmer also use conjunctions (e.g. while, though)
when he wants to tell something? The answer is yes, he and the Subordinate
Clause can.

The farmer continues:"While staying in
Detroit, I met one of my old Cambridge friends. Though living
lonesome, I liked to be with my friends!"

The
Subordinate Clause says."While I was staying
in Detroit, I met one of my old Cambridge friends. Though I was/
had been trained as a chemist I liked to be with my friends!"

There is only one question
left:What happens if the
subject of the main clause and the subject of the Participle clan are different?There is a little
helping hand assisting Farmer Present Participle: It's the preposition" with" together with
the new subject:

Example:I can't work properly with all that noise
going on.

You can make
one sentences sentence out of two even if they have different subjects
with the second subject using "with", followed by the subject and the Present
Participle".The relation between
the two consists of "reason" and "effect" or "condition" and "consequence".

Example:3 single sentences:I have prepared a test.
I use present participles. They make one sentence out of two.

One sentence with 2 subordinate
(relative) clauses:I have prepared a test
in which I use the present participles which make one sentence out of two.

One sentence - with + 2nd subject + present participleI have prepared a
test with present participles making one sentence out of two. (reason/condition) (effect/consequence)